The only Jew ever lynched in the U.S., Leo Frank was in custody and appealing his conviction of the murder of Atlanta factory worker Mary Phagan when a mob caught up with him. When I was a young boy I remember watching my grandfather, Nathan Belth, write at the dining room table of his Upper West Side apartment. He spread out research materials over the big surface and wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads. He was not an athletic man, but watching him struggle to write clear, concise prose made me think of writing as a rigorous discipline, as rigorous as throwing a javelin in the Olympics. Grandpa had been the head of public relations at the Anti-Defamation League for 25 years and was...
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